The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) (26 page)

“Again?” she asked.

“He’d come a few times, always when the Master was out,” Polly said. “He just dismissed the debt when I passed on the message. But now...

“I couldn’t pay,” she admitted. “The Mistress never gave me more than a hundred pounds every month to buy food. So I had to explain that he would have to ask you – and then he insisted on leaving a letter, explaining what Sir Travis owed.”

“Here,” Lestrade said. He passed Gwen an opened envelope. “You’ll need to read it carefully.”

Gwen took the paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. It was printed on cheap paper, topped with a faint series of Arabic letters. The rest of the paper, however, was in English – and devastatingly clear. Sir Travis had gambled at the Golden Turk, lost heavily – and owed the manager four thousand pounds. The note ended with a warning that if the funds were not provided within the week, the manager would begin legal proceedings against Sir Travis’s estate.

“He was a Sensitive,” Gwen said, out loud. “How did he manage to
lose
?”

But Sir Charles had said that Sir Travis was a man of honour. If he’d been able to control his talent to the point where he could dampen it down, or even suppress it completely, he would have been playing on an equal level to the other gamblers. And without that talent, he might have managed to lose – and lose badly. Four thousand pounds wasn’t bad – it was
disastrous
.

Lady Mary had told David, after her brother’s first fling with the tables, that gambling was dangerously addictive. She hadn’t known that Gwen was listening as she’d outlined horror stories of young men who got themselves so deep into debt that their families had to pay vast sums of money just to keep them out of debtor’s prison – or make the best marital arrangements they could, just to raise funds. One family had even had to sell its ancestral home. The message must have sunk in; David had rarely gambled since then, at least as far as Gwen knew.

“That seems to be a major chunk of Sir Travis’s estate,” Lestrade said. “At least, the parts of it that actually belonged to him outright. A lawsuit, however, might have to be settled before it went to court, or the hall itself might be at risk.”

Gwen nodded. A court wouldn’t care about the family’s heritage; if the debt was upheld, it would have to be paid in full. Sir Travis’s family would be better advised to find the money now, rather than risk losing the hall in court. What had Sir Travis been
thinking
? He’d been about to get married!

“I’ll look into it,” she said, reluctantly. “He
really
must have been keeping his magic under control.”

“More than that,” Lestrade said. “How much do you know about gambling halls?”

“Nothing,” Gwen admitted. She’d never been in one; young ladies didn’t, although she knew that some gambled at home with their friends. “Why...”

Lestrade gave her an odd smirk. “The average gambling hall doesn’t often allow such debts to be run up,” he explained. “When it does, they’re sure that the gambler can back his debts or that he has a backer, someone who will pay if he cannot.”

Gwen nodded. Her father had once backed a bill for a friend – and grumbled for weeks after the bank served him with a writ for fifty-seven pounds.

“But four thousand pounds would be beyond most backers,” Lestrade added. “Even the most devoted friend of a gambler would have objected to guaranteeing that much. I’d be surprised if anyone backed more than a couple of
hundred
pounds.”

“That makes sense,” Gwen mused. The next question was obvious. “Who backed the debt?”

“It doesn’t say,” Lestrade said. “Between you and me, Lady Gwen, the Golden Turk has a comfortable relationship with law enforcement. We cannot just demand answers from them...”

“But I can,” Gwen interrupted. “I am the executor of the will, am I not?”

“In that case, there are more letters for you,” Lestrade told her. “I was going to forward them to Mr. Norton.”

“Please do,” Gwen said. Sir Charles had mentioned the Golden Turk too – and she would have to go there. Maybe she could ask him to escort her and question him on the way. “Legally, this debt would have to be settled before the estate was parcelled out?”

“Probably,” Lestrade said. “Unless someone else paid the debt, cancelling it.”

Gwen nodded.
That
seemed unlikely.

“I’ll follow up on it,” she assured him. She nodded for Polly to leave the room, then continued. “But there’s been another matter.”

She explained, briefly, about Lady Elizabeth – and Howell. “Why,” she finished, “don’t the police arrest him?”

Lestrade sighed. “We’ve had our eye on him for a long time,” he admitted. “But he’s a cunning one, with too many friends in high places. Even if someone swore out a complaint, it would be hard to prove anything – and without proof we couldn’t search his house. Maybe we could get him a few months in jail, if someone stood up in court and provided evidence, but the witness would be ruined immediately afterwards.”

Gwen gritted her teeth. She’d once had to give evidence in front of a jury, a month after she’d been confirmed as Royal Sorceress, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. The defending attorney had torn into her, questioning everything from her competence to her impartiality. It was his job... but Gwen had found it hard to remember that afterwards.

And she’d just been a witness. If someone had stood up and explained that she’d been blackmailed, the entire secret would have to be discussed in open court. It would have been around London before the session had finished and all over the Empire within a week. And even if Howell spent some time in jail, what would it matter to his victim? Her life would have been ruined beyond repair.

“His reputation is terrifying,” Lestrade added. “Oh, he’s an honest man in his way; if someone pays, he stays bought. I’ve known some blackmailers to demand constant payments or else – but Howell just looks for one payment and never asks again.”

That was cunning, Gwen had to admit. If Howell had kept demanding money, his victim might have snapped and fought back. A single payment would be far less dangerous – and his victim might even have seen it as a bargain. But what was to stop the victim demanding the return of all of the compromising letters?

“He’ll keep something to ensure his own safety,” Lestrade said, when she asked. “But he won’t go after someone twice...”

Gwen had never fainted, not in her entire life. Women might have a reputation for fainting when shocked, something that she suspected men believed because they thought it proved that they were superior to women, but she had never fainted. Yet she came as close to it as she ever had as the awful realisation finally crystallised in her mind. Why would Lady Mary have even
heard
of Howell, let alone have been so scared of him... unless she’d been one of his victims! Her own
mother
had been blackmailed.

“Lady Gwen?” Lestrade said, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

Gwen opened her eyes, silently relieved that she had been sitting down. If she’d been standing, her legs would have buckled and she would have collapsed. And if she’d fainted in front of Lestrade... he might have seen it as proof that she was nothing more than a weak and feeble woman. Angrily, she took control of her emotions and thrust them to the back of her mind. There would be time to think about what Howell had done to Lady Mary later.

“I’m fine,” she growled. “Did you find any trace of Lady Elizabeth’s letters in his study?”

“None,” Lestrade said. “We’ve been through everything in his drawers, the safe you opened and a neat little hidden compartment underneath a chair. There were some financial notes, a set of observations on various Indians and Turks he’d had to deal with... but nothing that might have been compromising letters. The only thing we found that was anyway dubious was a set of French playing cards.”

Gwen sighed, inwardly. One of the students at Cavendish Hall had ended up in hot water after his tutor had discovered a set of French playing cards in his room. They were considered indecent, not entirely without reason, but that didn’t stop them being passed from hand to hand by young men. The pack the young man had owned had been incinerated by a Blazer... and he’d probably found a new one before the ashes had even cooled.

“No letters,” she mused. “Do you think he burned them?”

“It’s possible,” Lestrade said. “But we did check the fire to see what might have been burned and there were no traces of paper ash.”

Gwen considered it, carefully. If Howell had taken the letters to Sir Travis, would Sir Travis have allowed him to take them
away
? Perhaps, perhaps not... and Howell hadn’t seemed like a physically strong man, even when he wasn’t ill. Could he have intimidated someone who had ridden all over India, getting into scrapes and then getting out of them? Somehow, Gwen doubted that Sir Travis would have allowed Howell to scare him. He couldn’t be as bad as a mad mullah from the North-West Frontier.

But Howell had definitely walked away alive...

“Nothing about this makes sense,” she muttered. Howell hadn’t destroyed Lady Elizabeth’s reputation the following morning – and he could have done so,
before
he realised that Sir Travis was dead. That suggested that he’d had some reason to stay his hand, but what? Had Sir Travis promised him the money to buy his silence?

She called for Polly, who had been standing on the other side of the door. “Polly,” she said, slowly, “how often did Mr. Howell visit Sir Travis?”

“He came the morning before he died,” Polly said. “The Master was out, so he left a note promising that he would call in the evening. And then he left.”

Gwen shook her head, tiredly. “Was that the first time he came?”

“I think so,” Polly said. “Sir Travis might have met him outside the house.”

Maybe
, Gwen thought. Had Sir Travis been gambling to raise money to pay off Howell? It was possible, but if he desperately
needed
the money – and he did – why hadn’t he used his powers? Was there someone at the Golden Turk who would have sensed his magic, if he’d tried to use it? That was unlikely; unlike Talking, Sensitivity was a passive power. It was hard to notice unless one was a Talker.

And the timing seemed odd too. Lady Elizabeth hadn’t been allowed to talk privately with her fiancé – and Lady Bracknell had known nothing about the blackmail. Gwen was sure of
that
. She would have paid if she’d known, before sending Lady Elizabeth to a convent or marrying her off to someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions. How could Sir Travis have known that she needed money, or started running up such a high debt in the handful of days he would have had before Howell came to see him?

And just who had killed him?

“I’m going to have to go to the Golden Turk,” she said, shortly. She needed to think carefully. Maybe if she slept on it the whole case would make more sense. “Did you locate any of the jewels?”

“It seems that Lady Mortimer’s jewels were taken by her cousin,” Lestrade said. If the change in subject threw him, he didn’t show it. “They ignored what it said in the will.”

Gwen nodded, sourly. She would have a few sharp words with whoever had served as Lady Mortimer’s executor. The terms of a will could not be set aside at the behest of a relative, certainly not unless they proved that Lady Mortimer had been mentally unsound before she died. And there had been nothing to suggest that was the case.

She stood up. “I’m going back to Cavendish Hall,” she said. “Please let me know if anything changes.”

“You’ve got his journal and a few other papers,” Lestrade reminded her. “The rest of his documents seem fairly straightforward, so I’ll forward them to you along with a report when I’ve finished. However, I haven’t located anything that relate to gambling debts – or Howell.”

“They don’t get written down very often,” Gwen said. Lady Mary had told her that much, back when she’d been trying to hammer housekeeping into Gwen’s head. Some financial matters were never written down, or simply left with a coded title so that anyone else wouldn’t recognise them for what they were. “I’ll go through the journal and then tell you if I come across anything that might be important.”

She stood up and allowed Polly to escort her back to the entrance. There were several police carriages out there and she could have used one, but instead she chose to walk back to Cavendish Hall. She needed time to think.

Chapter Twenty-Two

D
octor Norwell had once told her that if she was perplexed, it was better to think about something else for a while and then return to the original subject with a fresh mind. Gwen tried to think about personal assignments instead of the murder investigation, but her mind refused to cooperate; she couldn’t help wondering just what Howell had on her mother that had terrified her so much. What had she
done
?

Lady Mary’s greatest shame was no secret, Gwen knew; everyone in Polite Society knew about her daughter, the devil-child. Howell could hardly blackmail her with something that was already public knowledge; she would have laughed in his face. But what else could there be? It was impossible to imagine her staid mother doing anything like Lady Elizabeth...

Or could it have something to do with me
? She thought.
What if I did come from the farms
?

Jack had been shocked by the realisation that his family wasn’t his real family – and he’d eventually turned against the Establishment, leading a revolution that had almost brought the British Empire to its knees. If Master Thomas had arranged for her to go to an aristocratic family, he would have made sure that Gwen never found out the truth. But how would he have known that she had magic before she used it when she was six years old? It was very rare to sense magic in a child...

But he had too many secrets
, she reminded herself.
What if he had one for locating magicians from birth
?

She could ask her mother... but Lady Mary would refuse to discuss it, just as she refused to discuss anything that was even slightly improper. And Howell... could it be that he’d
already
started to pressure Lady Mary into trying to convince Gwen to leave him alone? No, that couldn’t be possible; the timing simply didn’t work.